Cush fathered Nimrod; he was the first on earth to be a mighty man. He was a mighty hunter before the Lord. Therefore it is said, “Like Nimrod a mighty hunter before the Lord.” The beginning of his kingdom was Babel, Erech, Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar.

Reuters) -
Islamic State fighters have looted and bulldozed the ancient Assyrian
city of Nimrud, the Iraqi government said, in their latest assault on
some of the world's greatest archaeological and cultural treasures.A tribal source from the nearby
city of Mosul told Reuters the ultra-radical Sunni Islamists, who
dismiss Iraq's pre-Islamic heritage as idolatrous, had pillaged the
3,000-year-old site on the banks of the Tigris river, once capital of
the world's most powerful empire. The
assault against Nimrud came just a week after the release of a video
showing Islamic State supporters smashing museum statues and carvings in
Mosul, the city they seized along with much of northern Iraq last June.The United Nations
cultural agency UNESCO condemned Islamic State's actions as "cultural
cleansing" and a war crime. The government in Baghdad said the fighters
were defying "the will of the world and the feelings of humanity.""In
a new crime in their series of reckless offences they assaulted the
ancient city of Nimrud and bulldozed it with heavy machinery,
appropriating archaeological attractions dating back 13 centuries BC,"
the tourism and antiquities ministry said.Nimrud,
about 20 miles (30 km) south of Mosul, was built around 1250 BC. Four
centuries later it became capital of the neo-Assyrian empire - at the
time the most powerful state on earth, extending to modern-day Egypt, Turkey and Iran.Many
of its most famous surviving monuments were removed years ago by
archaeologists, including colossal Winged Bulls which are now in
London's British Museum and hundreds of precious stones and pieces of
gold which were moved to Baghdad.But
ruins of the ancient city remain at the northern Iraqi site, excavated
by a series of experts since the 19th century. British archaeologist Max
Mallowan and his wife, crime writer Agatha Christie, worked at Nimrud
in the 1950s.

Agatha Christie

"CULTURAL CLEANSING""Islamic
State members came to the Nimrud archaeological city and looted the
valuables in it and then they proceeded to level the site to the
ground," the Mosul tribal source told Reuters. "There used to be statues
and walls as well as a castle that Islamic State has destroyed
completely."Archaeologists have
compared the assault on Iraq's cultural history to the Taliban's
destruction of Afghanistan's giant Bamiyan Buddha statues in 2001. But
the damage being wreaked by Islamic State, not just to ancient monuments
but also on some Muslim places of worship, is even more relentless and
wide-ranging."This is yet another
attack against the Iraqi people, reminding us that nothing is safe from
the cultural cleansing underway in the country," said UNESCO chief
Irina Bokova."The deliberate
destruction of cultural heritage constitutes a war crime," Bokova said,
describing Iraq's history as "the heritage of the whole of humanity".Last
week's video showed fighters toppling statues and carvings from plinths
in the Mosul museum and smashing them with sledgehammers and drills. It
also showed damage to a huge statue of a bull at the Nergal Gate into
the city of Nineveh.Archaeologists
said it was hard to quantify the damage; although some items appeared
to be replicas, many priceless articles had been destroyed including
artefacts from Hatra, a stunning pillared city in northern Iraq dating back 2,000 years.Iraq's
senior Shi'ite cleric, Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani called on the country's
deeply divided religious and ethnic groups to come together to fight
Islamic State."Day after day, the
need is proven for everyone to unite and fight this ferocious
organisation that spares neither man nor stone," Sistani said in a
Friday sermon delivered by an aide in the southern city of Kerbala.Iraqi forces and Shi'ite militia supported by Shi'ite Iran
have launched an offensive to drive Islamic State from the northern city
of Tikrit and could move on Mosul later this year. A U.S.-led coalition
is also mounting air strikes against the fighters.Iraqi officials said last week that Islamic State had kept many artefacts to sell to antiquities smugglers and raise revenue. A prominent politician from Iraq's
Assyrian Christian community, some of whose members still speak the
Aramaic language of Jesus, told Reuters on Friday that the destruction
at Nimrud was aimed at covering up the fact that the militants had
stolen and sold many pieces. Yonadam Kanna described them as "an
ignorant, backward gang that seeks to erase the collective memory of Iraq and its culture and heritage".Modern day Iraq
was one of the birthplaces of civilisation, with agriculture and writing
pioneered on the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers more than
5,000 years ago. Many of the cities and empires mentioned in the bible's
Old Testament were in what is now northern Iraq.In
the south, sheltered from Islamic State depredation but still damaged
by years of conflict and theft, lie Babylon - site of Nebuchadnezzar's
Hanging Gardens - Ur, birthplace of the Biblical patriarch Abraham, and
the imperial capitals of Arab and Iranian empires in Samarra, Baghdad
and Ctesiphon.Islamic State, which rules a self-declared caliphate in north Iraq and eastern Syria,
promotes a fiercely purist interpretation of Sunni Islam, rejecting
religious shrines of any sort and condemning Iraq's majority Shi'ites as
heretics.In July it destroyed the
tomb of the prophet Jonah in Mosul. It has also attacked Shi'ite places
of worship and has ordered non-Muslims to convert, pay a tax or face
the sword. (Additional reporting by Isabel Coles in Erbil; Editing by Peter Graff)

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About Me

Ambassador T. Brikins is a Writer Blogger, Mass Communications Consultant and Inforpreneur having experiences in the National News Media, Oil and Gas, Administration, University and the Church of Christ..
He is C.E.O. @ New Direction Communications..
He is an ordained Minister and heavily imparted by Dr. David Oyedepo, Pastor E.A.Adeboye, Rev.Roselyn Oduyemi, Kenneth Copeland,Dr. D.Yongi Cho, Apostle Alex Bamgbola, Kenneth E. Hagin, Apostle G. Oduyemi, Archbishop Benson Idahosa, T.L. Osborn,Dr. E.W. Kenyon , Oral Roberts and many more.
Ambassador T. Brikins runs with the visions of Isaiah 11:9; Matthew 23:23 and 11 Corinthians 5:16-21 working with the Lord for their practical expressions in every area of life. .
He lives in Lagos, Nigeria.
Twitter:@Brikins_tuoyo
Email:weightiermatter@gmail.com
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